Editor's Choice

Pennsylvania's Montour Elementary School stands out even among schools that have embraced STEAM education, the maker movement, hands-on learning and augmented and virtual reality. So when the K–4 school opened the world's first "Brick Makerspace" — a Lego-powered STEAM lab developed and implemented in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University, Lego Education, parents, students and a local Barnes and Noble — it wasn't just a one-off affair; rather, it was yet another advance in the school's efforts to integrate principles of STEAM education throughout the curriculum.

Top 10 Articles of the Last Month

Just how much does it cost to set up a personalized learning plan for an entire school, and is it really sustainable? Could a typical school budget cover the expense — and what would happen if budget cuts had to be made?

Discovery Communications announced that it's letting go of a majority ownership stake in its K–12 education subsidiary, Discovery Education, whose ed tech portfolio ranges from textbooks to educational multimedia to a major educator network. A private equity firm is picking up a controlling interest in Discovery Education for $120 million.

A joint Harvard-MIT study has discovered that it's more important to engage young children in back-and-forth conversation for developing their language skills than it is to expose them to as many words as possible.

Minecraft: Education Edition has received a new resource pack designed to let students learn chemistry within the game itself. Resources also include new lessons and activities, a teacher lab book, a downloadable world and community support.

Currently, policies tend to encourage a "one-size-fits-all" model for teacher certification, tracking accountability and placing seat time above competency in measuring learning success. According to a new report, transforming that model and promoting personalized learning will require educators and policymakers to shift how they "think of school."

We stare at our phones all the time not because the devices themselves are addictive, but because we're driven to socialize, according to a recent literature review by researchers at McGill University.

Whether they're filling in the "30-million-word gap" or increasing the number of "conversational turns" they have with adults, a group of kids at a Virginia childcare center were exposed to an average of 1,100 more words and 59 conversational turns by the time they'd participated in a four-month pilot study. The pilot used a "talking pedometer" that records the conversation a child has.

Four in 10 of the top websites pose dangers to their visitors. According to cybersecurity vendor Menlo Security, out of the top 100,000 websites as ranked by Alexa, 42 percent are "risky." A risky website is any site where either the homepage or an associated background site is running vulnerable software; the site is known to distribute malware or launch attacks; or the site has already suffered a security breach in the past 12 months.

Upcoming K–12 Grants

Sponsor: National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF), Partners in Resource Education, Hands on the Land Network
Award: $500 to $5,000
Number of Awards: Up to $65,000 in total awards in the 2018 program
Application Deadline: March 1

Sponsor: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (U.S. Department of Commerce)
Award: Grants tend to fall in the $450,000 range. See NOAA's awards page for details.
Number of Awards: Varies (two in 2017, five in 2016, six in 2015)
Application Deadline: April 9

Sponsor: Entertainment Software Association Foundation
Award: Not specified, but suggested upper limit for first-time applicants is $50,000
Number of Awards: Not specified
Application Deadline: Letters of inquiry due May 15 (submission period opens April 14)

Sponsor: SparkFun
Award: STEM/STEAM-related prize packages, event and team sponsorships and other types of support
Number of Awards: Varies
Application Deadline: Ongoing: third Thursday of each month; awards announced on the last business day of each month

Deadline: Ongoing
Award: No more than 10 percent of an organization's annual operating expenses or 25 percent of the total budget for the project being funded; awards have ranged from the hundreds to the millions of dollars.
Number of Awards: Varies
Qualification: Project should "directly serve or impact children living in urban poverty, particularly in the areas of education, family economic stability (including microfinance) and childhood health."

Sponsor: Toshiba America Foundation
Award: Two categories: Up to $5,000 and more than $5,000
Number of Awards: Not specified
Application Deadline: Up to $5,000 awarded on a rolling basis; Feb. 1 deadline for applications for more than $5,000

THE Journal Insider offers readers the best our magazine has to offer. Each issue contains select articles chosen by the editors for their appeal to readers and for their significance in advancing the mission of education technology in K-12. THE Journal Insider is published monthly.

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